alt Hacker NewsI used to work adjacent to a team who worked from closely-defined specs for web sites, and it used to infuriate the living hell out of me. The specs had all sorts of horrible UI choices and bugs and stuff that just plain wouldn't work when coded. I tried my best to get them to implement the intent of the spec, not the actual spec, but they had been trained in one method only and would not deviate at any cost.
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mrkeen • yesterday at 6:14 AM
What formal verification system did they use? Did they even execute it?
Yeah, IMO, the spec almost always needs refinement. I've worked for some companies where they tried to write specs with precision down to every word; but what happened is; if the spec was too detailed, it usually had to be adjusted later once it started to conflict with reality (efficiency, costs, security/access restrictions, resource limits, AI limitations)... If it wasn't detailed enough, then we had to read between the lines and fill in a lot of gaps... And usually had to iterate with the stakeholder to get it right.
At most other companies, it's like the stakeholder doesn't even know what they want until they start seeing things on a screen... Trying to write a formal spec when literally nobody in the universe even knows what is required; that's physically impossible.
In my view, 'Correct code' means code that does what the client needs it to do. This is downstream from it doing what the client thinks they want; which is itself downstream from it doing what the client asked for. Reminds me of this meme: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/105v2h/what_the_cust...
Software engineers don't get nearly enough credit for how difficult their job is.